Tuesday, November 25, 2014

Window on Eurasia: Russian Soldiers Said Injuring Themselves to Avoid Being Sent to Ukraine

Paul
Goble

Staunton, November 25 – Some
draftees in the Russian army are inflicting injuries on themselves in order to
avoid being sent to the fighting in southeastern Ukraine, an indication of
their fears about what might happen to them there and of growing opposition to
the Kremlin’s aggression, according to Elena Vasilyeva.

Vasilyeva, a Russian human rights
activist who has spent the last two months in Ukraine gathering data on Russian
losses there, provided only anecdotal evidence for this, and consequently,
there is no way to know just how widespread this extreme form of resistance to
the Russian command extends (ife.pravda.com.ua/person/2014/11/24/184538/).

But her report deserves attention
for two reasons. On the one hand, her work in identifying what happened to
Russian soldiers in Ukraine has brought her into contact with large numbers of
relatives of these soldiers, including many who were sent there had it not been
for her efforts would not have any information about whether they died or
wounded.

And on the other, as she told her
interviewer, November is an especially difficult time for commanders because
one cycle of draftees is going home and another has not yet been trained
sufficiently to be dispatched to combat. Because of that, some commanders have
been trying to force older draftees to sign up as professionals so that they
can be used in this way.

The
government-controlled media in the Russian Federation has not reported any of
this resistance, something that will lead Moscow’s supporters and apologists to
conclude that Vasiliyeva’s reports are necessarily untrue. But such official
efforts have not prevented some information from coming out and reaching a
larger audience.

As the Russian
war in Ukraine continues, that trend will only continue as will
both the combat losses Vasiliyeva has pointed to before and this kind of
self-inflicted wounding.And as
information about these things spread, more Russians will come to oppose the
Kremlin’s war adding to the 50 percent who already do.